Meet Your Neighbors

Dale Engquist:
Dean of the Dunes

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore might seem an odd place to find a group of gritty city kids, but for retiring Superintendent Dale Engquist, it’s one of the most natural pairings in the world. On a recent sunny afternoon, roughly 180 school children spent the day at the national park.

As manager of one of the nation’s most urban parks, part of Engquist’s job has been not only to protect the wild places at the southern tip of Lake Michigan but to serve as a resource to surrounding cities and suburbs. For Engquist, 67, one of the best ways to do that is through education, by sharing with the next generation his passion for biodiversity conservation and science-based resource management. Engquist says that as many as 30,000 students from surrounding states annually participate in experiential education at the Lakeshore.

“Many of these children have never heard the sounds of nature, not animal sounds, wind in trees,” he says. “Many of them say that they didn’t even know there was a national park here.” Engquist has good reason for being so attuned to this relationship: he himself has had a foot in two worlds. This self-described city boy grew up roaming the busy streets in Chicago’s Near West Side Italian-Polish neighborhood. But he was equally at home at the nearby Garfield Park Conservatory.

“I liked that place and thought it was really cool,” he says. “I would sit there for hours looking at the palm trees, the banana trees, and the cactus. I guess you could say that I became a botanist by osmosis.” Engquist graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in botany and a minor in zoology, and after stints as naturalist and manager at other federal sites, he joined the staff at the National Lakeshore in 1978 as assistant superintendent. Five years later, he was promoted to superintendent.

With 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline between Gary and Michigan City, the 15,000-acre Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore hosts nearly 2 million visitors annually. At the same time, the lakeshore is home to hundreds of species of plants and animals, and shelters 30 percent of the state’s threatened and endangered plant species. Such diversity comes from the park’s unusual landscape, including rare sandy depressions called pannes (look behind Dale in this photo).

Managing such a significant national park in an urban setting has been challenging. “This is not a quiet park where the major responsibility is making sure the grass is cut and the buildings maintained,” Engquist says. Because the park is crisscrossed with busy roads, train tracks, and utility transmission lines, it is especially vulnerable to invasive species. A federal parks team does the heavy work of controlling them, while lakeshore staff work with student groups to collect native seed and grow plants for use in restoration projects and educational programs. Spring and fall controlled burns are also regular events.

Engquist’s talent for forging local partnerships has been invaluable to his work as Indiana’s representative on the steering committee of the Chicago Wilderness consortium. He’s formed alliances with local municipalities and citizen groups, his most recent being a partnership with Porter County to open a new jointly operated visitors’ center (read about it in the Lakeshore’s paper, The Singing Sands).

The superintendent’s administrative schedule leaves little free time, but when he gets the chance he’ll eat his sack lunch at the park’s restored pioneer farm. One of his other favorite places is Cowles Bog, where the remnant dunes evoke a wild presettlement lakeshore.

Engquist was eligible for retirement 12 years ago but wasn’t ready to relinquish stewardship. He expects to clean out his office sometime in January, but don’t look for him on the golf course. His plans include serving as a volunteer at the park as well as supporting the Chicago Wilderness coalition. “I love this landscape,” he says. “That’s why I’ve stayed all these years.”

— LeAnn Spencer

Related Articles:

Profile of Indiana Dunes (National Lakeshore and State Park), CW, Summer 2004